


Blue Moon

by goldpsyduck



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Gold & Silver & Crystal | Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal Versions
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25465051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldpsyduck/pseuds/goldpsyduck
Summary: In the small, uncharted Johto town of El Pequeño,  seventeen-year-old Mariana Alvarez is desperate for an opportunity to turn her life around, even if it means taking a cold plunge into the lucrative secret industry of Rare Candy trafficking.note: best suited for mature readers





	Blue Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Maria Full of Grace](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/654232) by Joshua Marston. 



> warning: reader discretion is advised for this novel as it contains
> 
> • moderately strong language
> 
> •mentions of drugs and alcohol
> 
> •descriptions of violence and/or abuse
> 
> •and other dark/ mature themes
> 
> that may be upsetting to some readers.
> 
> \- i am not promoting or encouraging any of the actions taken by the characters in this fic. 
> 
> \- this fic is entirely fictional and features a darker look and interpretation of the Pokémon world, largely inspired by the movie Maria Full of Grace shown in my AP Spanish class. 
> 
> -adding on to the previous point, this was an incomplete story that has remained in my drafts for a while now, so I am publishing it in hopes that maybe doing so will help motivate me to eventually finish it; unfortunately, that means updates will be rather slow and inconsistent
> 
> comments & feedback are always appreciated
> 
> thanks :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariana cuts ties with her workplace after an incident occurs.

I USED TO THINK that the worst thing about mornings was how frustrating waking up was. Forcing yourself awake before the sun rose was like trying to make a drunkard give up alcohol. I hated peeling myself from the comforts of my warm sheets and bed for the longest time before I befriended restlessness and embraced insomnia. Now waking up isn't so hard anymore.

Instead, the worst thing about mornings is when you know that today's morning is going to be exactly the same as yesterday's and the day before that. How today's morning is also going to be the same as tomorrow's and the day after that. When every day seems like the start to another mundane cycle, the repeat of the same, old day, waking up everyday becomes less worthwhile, and yet I still do it because I have to.

This morning, I wake up to a cracked, beige ceiling and a useless, broken clock at my bedside whose two hands point at exactly the same points as it has been. Something new is paired with the nausiness swirling at the pits of my stomach - a splitting headache. I touch my forehead. It's unusually warm today, and my mind feels fuzzy. I can't remember if I slept or not because sometimes I don't and sometimes I just dream I don't. All I can recall from the previous are the high-pitched cries of my older sister's baby, José, who's such a little rascal that he only throws his fits at night. At this early time of the day, no one is awake but me. The sky is just beginning to lighten. The air is cool.

I wash my face in the basin with cold water and tie my brown hair back into a ponytail. I grab my satchel hanging on a hook on the way out my front door and catch a small, white shuttle bus to work. The town that I live in is so small, so unknown, and so poor with a population count barely over a hundred that it'd be an embarrassment to include us on the same Johto map as the other mainland towns and cities. El Pequeño Town is the name.

There's a large factory next to the town's plaza where most able residents work for a living, including me. I work on an assembly line screwing the spray nozzle tops of Potions onto open bottles. I've done it for so long that the lined indents of the nozzle heads have left permanent marks and calluses on my fingertips, but I can't say I hate it. I think of it as a physical reminder of how hard I've worked, and it keeps me going. The only thing I really hate are the uniforms: the mustard-yellow apron that reaches my shins, the tight latex gloves and mask, and the greasy hair net. Summer or winter, the factory is always overwhelmingly heated, and the stench of body odor lays thickly in the air. My workplace - if you can really call it that - is practically a closed-in warehouse with little to no windows and old, overhead lights that look like they could fall any minute and crush someone's skull. Not that it's happened before, but I swear one day it might.

I arrive at my station, next to my neighbor and best friend Bianca. She's just a month and a half younger than me, but she's shorter than me by a whole foot. Her coffee skin is darker than mine, and she has large lips and brown eyes that compliment her round figure, despite what she says otherwise. We've been working side-by-side ever since we both started as teenagers.

"Hey," she says. "You're late."

"Hardly," I say, wiping sweat off my face, "I don't think el Gordo noticed."

El Gordo is the nickname we came up for our grouchy white supervisor whose only job is to walk up and down the line, making sure we are topping at least two hundred bottles every hour. We joke that he loses weight every time we see him from all the exercise he gets from his job.

"So how did it go?" I ask, grabbing a violet bottle off the conveyor belt. I get right to work.

"How did what go?"

I almost roll my eyes because I know she knows what I'm referring to.

"The date," I say as I reach over for a white nozzles in the plastic bins. "The one you were so excited about. You know."

She stops and looks at me blankly. "He never came."

I stop, dumbfounded. I recall how it was raining last night. "What? How long did you wait?"

"An hour," she says, and it's so obvious that it's a lie. Whenever Bianca lies, she does this thing where she opens and closes her mouth a little with her eyes up to the ceiling.

"No, be real with me here," I say.

"Four hours," she admits. "Then I realized he wasn't coming.

"That's a record. You must have really liked him."

"I did," she sighs. Her expression changes, and it's clear to me that she isn't happy that I chose this topic to bring up. So I try my best to change it without making it seem too obvious.

"Hey, what about the guy who you said kept looking at you last week during lunch? The one with green eyes and pointed nose?"

"Oh, I approached him like you told me to," she says, "except he smelled really weird like ass."

"The sweatshirt guy at the bus station?"

"He has a wife and kids."

"Uh, what about the guy with the mole on his ear whose smile you said you liked?"

"I found out he wasn't into girls."

"Oh gosh."

"Yeah, you think, Mari? I think I'm done."

"Me too," I say as a joke, but I guess it didn't come out that way.

I watch as she purses her lips and frowns at me. "Are you serious? I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You have a boyfriend," she says hotly, looking down. "Must be so nice when you can get what you want all the time by being pretty and skinny."

I look at her, but she isn't looking. It shocks me how often she can just act as if her tone and comments don't hurt even a little. I hate how un-problematic I think Bianca assumes having a boyfriend is. How she thinks having one is equivalent to free drinks at town bars and pretty picnics in flower fields on the sides of dirt trails. I haven't even talked to Juan this entire week, and I swear she still assumes I go to his place every other night.

We used to have big dreams, Bianca and I. The kind of dreams that we know we won't pursue because we've barely got enough change in our pockets to buy nice things but fantasizing about them is fun anyway.

We've thought about traveling to Hoenn to frolic on the beaches with the palm trees or losing ourselves in a world of skyscrapers and blinking lights in Castelia City of Unova, but truth to be told, it hasn't been the same since I got together with Juan. No matter how often I remind Bianca how beautiful she is and tell her how certain I am that she will find someone, she takes what I say as gestures of pity and goes out of her way to make it obvious to me that she doesn't need it. It's upsetting how often I think our conversations end so bitterly, but I keep letting it go because I value our friendship too much.

For the rest of the morning, I stay quiet. It used to be that talking to Bianca usually helps to pass the time but at the risk of El Gordo bellowing at us to shut up. Two hours in, my headache from this morning starts to feel worse, but I bite my lip and keep going. I blame the heat, and I try to keep myself distracted from the pain by taking deeper breaths through my mask.

Potions don't smell as strongly as Super or Hyper Potions, and I usually can top about two hundred and forty within the first hour, but today, I gradually start to feel sick after capping my fifty-sixth one. That nauseating feel at the pit of my stomach hits me harder than it's ever hit before - harder than yesterday's - and my body can't take it. It's like a ticking bomb has suddenly just exploded inside my guts. I double over and gag.

"Oh shit, Mari, are you okay?" Bianca rushes to help me up.

I start coughing, saliva dribbling all over my heated face. I'm an absolute mess.

"Señor!" Bianca calls El Gordo over. I can feel the stares of the other workers penetrating me like invisible bullets. "Mariana doesn't feel well. Can she use the bathroom?"

"Again?" His loud voice makes the rest of the workers resume their labor. His nasty blue eyes look down at me in a way that makes me feel like I am just a little more than nothing. "She's way behind. This happened yesterday."

"Please," I attempt to say. I feel awful begging. I feel awful needing Bianca to support me. I just feel awful. "I'll be quick."

"Listen," he says, crossing his arms," I have one hundred and twenty-eight workers here, and none of them have been as problematic as you have. Everyone puts their head down and work, but somehow you don't seem to get that."

"Señor, please - " Bianca tries to plead for me, but there's no need. My body lurches forward like a struggling Magikarp on land and the yellow liquid contents of my stomach from the night before spill all over the ground, dripping. Some of it has gotten onto El Gordo's shiny black loafers. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, but what's done is done, and it's clear and visible on the ground. My body feels numb.

I look up slowly. El Gordo is livid.

"Clean this up," he orders. He enunciates every word. "Disgusting."

"I have to go to the bathroom," I say again, swallowing my sour spit.

"And I'd like a winning lottery ticket, but you know what? Neither of us is going to get what we want unless you do something about your mess. Clean this up."

"How? I can't clean this up," I say weakly, standing up a bit straighter. "I don't have anything to clean it up with."

"So you're back-talker huh," he says. "You think you're being funny?" 

For a moment I stare at him, and then I look at Bianca. She looks petrified, and I feel obligated to keep her out of trouble. I push her away from me so that I'm standing on my own. "I'm sorry, señor," I apologize, avoiding his gaze. "Can you show me where I can - "

"- No."

I stop, confused.

"I'm sorry?"

"Get on your hands and knees and clean this up now. Use your damn uniform if you have to. I don't care. Then you can return to your station and make up double what you just owed me this hour, or forget your pay. I don't have time for this kind of bullshit."

His eyes narrow, and his voice inflicts a final tone. I know he is waiting for me to do the expected, but something inside of me snaps and I don't.

I look el Gordo squarely in the eyes, and I force myself to take a short breath before speaking three words in a voice I can't recognize as my own.

"No. I quit."


End file.
